The Temple of the Sun

Ahmedabad, India, travel by bus to Patan, India, 7-31-08, (Sun Temple Modera), We had another trip out into the countryside that was awesome. We spent about 1.5 hours on the bus. We went past a very large dairy and many large industrial complexes before we got out into the countryside. The temple we visited was built in 1026 AD and is dedicated to the Sun-God, Surya and stands high over a big tank depression filled with water. The sun falls on the image of Surya at the times of the equinoxes. Every inch of the temple is carved with magnificent God and Goddesses, birds, beasts and flowers. The dance hall of this temple has quite a bit of erotica and I will save those stories and pictures for later.
We had the pleasure of visiting a small Jain temple in a small little town of Patan, India. The families and people in the streets were very nice. We had no beggars or people trying to sell us stuff. We had genuine human interactions with people who were just as interested in us as we were of them. The temple was gorgeous and the small town was rough but had many houses that at one time were magnificent. We drove around a few more streets and took our box lunches to a small weaving factory. Patola weaving is one of the most famous Ikat traditions. Patan Patoula saries are highly prized as festival cloth in Gujarat. The silk fabrics are dyed with vegetable dyes. The process is extremely time consuming and complicated. The sari the men were working on will take four people about four months to complete. The weavers work every day from early morning to late at night and never take a day off except for family deaths. The family has been weavers for over ten generations. This small city used to have over 100 family businesses back in the 1970’s. National Geographic wrote about the family in 1974. This is the last family in the region to continue this art of dyeing and weaving. They only do special orders and a Sari starts around $10,000 US. They showed use an elephant print they did years ago and it was worth over a half a million dollars. I was only able to afford a small scarf. I though it was a fascinating out of the way place to visit.
We traveled to Rani-ki-Vav a step well. This underground hotel like structure was built around 1050 AD. It was a seven story building that was all most all underground. It had a huge well with water that supported the large caravans of travelers moving goods in India. At the time this was considered the five star hotel of its day. Large caravans would stop on there long travels as stay for a while. As we approached the building from the parking lot we couldn’t see anything but a beautiful park like grounds. As we got real closer there were steps down to this underground hotel like structure. Only five stories are there today as it used to be seven stories. Again the walls are carved with Hindu gods and goddesses, asparas (fairies) and other themes. A very interesting place and it is hard to image what the place would have been like 900 years ago.